The good and the bad

The good news is that I made some more progress in my finish experiments. The bad news is that I cannot show the results....an unfortunate collapse of the ceiling above the work table, followed by steaming water gushing down obliterated the work...

However - we (the same famous "we" that the New Yorker magazine uses..) are to stay positive and so this is what I managed to do since the last posting:

Dye: I noticed that it was too hard to keep an even dye tone with my previous method. My idea of coming in and gently skimming the wood in one controlled motion (like an airplane landing and then taking off) turned out to be a poor one. It's just too hard to get good results. A better idea was to dilute the dye much more than I had. Then do the opposite of what I had originally said - namely, rub the dye into the wood continuously over and over until you get the desired coloration. I tried the method on the small remaining part of the wood sample and ended up with MUCH better results. That is good progress.

Finish: I applied about 6 coats of Tru-Oil diluted in mineral spirits. I think this works really well, even though I was not able to take it to a full polished finish. The thin coats go on easily with a rag and the lightest rubbing with 2000 grit paper knocked down any slight rough spots between coats. I like the richness of the finish as well. This is definitely what I will use on the mandolin.

When I started applying the Tru-Oil, I transferred some to a cotton pad and then applied it to the wood. That seemed very wasteful, as much of the oil remained in the pad. I wanted an easy method to transfer small amounts of oil to the wood before putting the pad down on it. I remembered that I had bought some pipets from stewmac and tried to use them to drop a little oil on the wood. It worked perfectly! These pipets are inexpensive and disposable, although they kept well between coat applications. I think I could end up using only one or two for the whole instrument.

I am going to set aside the finish experiments and move on to final sanding work